Monday, November 21, 2016

Marketers need to realise that consumers don’t think the way you want them to

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump won the US presidential elections.
The reactions ranged from disbelief to horror to fear to dismay. The
educated class, the political analyst, the media and Hillary Clinton got
it completely wrong — they had written him off.

Let me quickly tell you that I have no political leanings, knowledge or
the slightest interest in politics. My obsession is with marketing and
communication — period. Let’s look at Trump’s victory from this
perspective. I am sure you will find enough food for thought here.

Love me or hate me

An expression I love quoting is “Love me or hate me but for God’s sake
don’t ignore me!” Can anyone ignore an in-your-face Trump? Another quote
by Bill Bernbach is relevant here: “If you stand for something, you
will always find some people for you and some against you”.

Donald stood for something, even if the educated intelligentsia didn’t
bother to pay enough attention to what his beliefs were. They were busy
tweeting jokes while he was busy appealing to people’s emotions. And we
all know the outcome.

A single-minded thought

“Great advertising is produced by a single-minded thought that comes
alive in a compelling way,” Tim Bell, an advertising great of my time,
had said. And that’s gospel truth as far as I am concerned.

What did Trump say? “Let’s make America great again” — a line as simple as ache din or garibi hatao.
This always brings to fore an important point — that when you are
talking to millions, the simpler your message, the greater are the
chances of success. What was Hillary’s single-minded thought? I didn’t
get it. Did you?

Missing the wood for the trees

Perhaps the UK’s biggest failure in recent times was Brexit, which saw
the English polarised, with many wanting to stay on their own.
Similarly, with both Obama and Clinton, in America, one saw an inability
to understand that the average Johnny doesn’t care for globalisation.

The American voter has probably never heard of “the world is flat”, much
less care for it. . This person cares about his/her own job, and
Trump’s talk about immigration hit home, as the insecure American blames
immigrants for his current state of affairs. Playing on people’s fears
seems to have worked. But who knows what might actually happen now that
Trump is president?

Spend smartly

In the early stages of the campaign, the Hillary camp was almost
gloating over its ability to outspend Donald Trump and consistently kept
overspending. Does advertising work? Does it make a difference to
voters? It probably does. How else can one reach millions of viewers? Of
course my personal view, despite being a great admirer of the
discipline (advertising), is that in elections, its value might be
overstated, as Hillary Clinton would have discovered.

People in ivory towers

I think one of the greatest challenges in marketing is that people carry
their baggage with them. They carry their own prejudices, biases and
beliefs wherever they go. Let me give you my personal example.

I am convent educated, did my Masters in Economics at Loyola College and
went to IIM Bangalore. So bloody what! I am not the consumer. It is
about my consumer who is reading page 3, watching what, according to me,
is a lousy serial. So I must focus on him/her and not on myself. And
this is really what the Clinton supporters, analysts and most certainly
the media, got wrong.

They focused on the outlandish statements made by Trump, laughed at them
and thought the world too was laughing with them. The world might have
thought that way, but the average voter is not on Twitter. Trump struck a
chord in the average voter.

Let me give you an analogy from the world of advertising. Below is an
old ad that most of educated India hated. They said “How dare they?” and
protested loudly. This was for ‘Fair & Lovely’. But it hit the
Indian girl in the gut because it was about her and offered her hope.
She went out and bought it by the dozen.

Hope for the future

Yes, hope is a great emotion in life and that is how India voted a
couple of years ago and how America voted this week. Only time will tell
whether the hopes will be realised or belied. But it is a big lesson
for all pollsters and marketers who are too full of themselves and their
pet theories to see that the greatest challenge is to understand the
consumer.

he consumers are different and they will behave in the manner they wish
to, not the way you want them to, simply because we think we are
smarter.

Donald Trump has made many of us eat humble pie and full credit to him. Let’s hope too that our worst fears don’t come true!